TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Okanagan salmon is back

Several years ago I wrote that fesh water salmon at least need to be
introduced into our lake systems including the Great Lakes and
ultimately throughout the boreal forest. This steruck me as the best
and easiest as thanks to the recent retreat of the Ice Age much of
our lake system had as yet been fully optimised.

Now we discover just how rapidly this can happen. The clear next
step is to stock all those lakes in the Okanagon which thanks to
advanced hatchery technology is now laughibly efficient.

Obviously the next step is to thouroughly stock the Okanagon Lake
system fully and harvest enough each year to allow minimal wastage.
I think we may be looking at thousands of tons.

Better this will make the Okanagon the ideal fishing holiday for the
whole family. Come to the Okanagon and have your host prepare a meal
of salmon that you have just caught beside his winery.

My point is that for this one lake the real payoff is that big. It
also tells me that Lake Champlain could use this fish also to replace
the salmon fishery long since destroyed. The key is really the
efficent hatchery and fry rearing system now available. That is what
swamped this lake here.

This is a fish story.
But it’s not a tall tale about the one that got away. Instead, it’s
the story of a fish that, against all odds, came back.

“It’s such a good
news story and when it comes to fisheries, you never have good news
stories,” says Ingrid Jarrett, general manager of the Watermark
Beach Resort and president of the Thompson Okanagan Slow Food
convivium. “Usually, it’s one disaster after another.”

The fish in question
is the Okanagan sockeye salmon. Never heard of it? You’re not
alone. Although the rivers and lakes of the Okanagan Valley once ran
silvery blue with this once-abundant inland fish, its numbers were
decimated by a series of man-made disasters until it came close to
extinction in the mid-1990s.

But now the salmon is
back in Osoyoos Lake, in such large numbers that it’s become an
exciting new addition to the local food scene. There are so many fish
that, on Thursday, the recreational and commercial fishery will
officially open on the lake. Until a couple of years ago, there had
never been a recreational fishery here, ever.

How all this came
about is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between the
Okanagan Nation, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the
provincial government, local foodies, environmentalists, recreational
fishers, tourism experts and consumers on both sides of the
Canada-U.S. Border.

“I’ve never been
involved with a recovery in such a short time, when the power of
prayer and perseverance of people working together (created such) a
positive outcome,” says Richard Bussanich, fisheries biologist for
the Okanagan Nation Alliance. “That’s unique in itself.”Take a
tour through the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos and,
among the First Nations artifacts, you’ll see the kinds of salmon
drying racks typical to the Pacific coast. But Osoyoos is a long way
from the ocean. So, you might wonder, what are they doing here?

Turns out that, for
millennia, the Okanagan Nation relied on a unique species of inland
salmon as a major part of their diet.

“They were never
hunters; they were always fishers,” says Jarrett. “This was the
main protein for the Okanagan First Nations and they would have
traded with the Similkameen First Nations, who were hunters. If you
speak to the elders, they all remember the sockeye. But only the
elders.”

Then, in the 1930s,
during the height of the Depression, the United States embarked on a
series of public works projects to create employment. One of the
biggest was the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River — the river
into which the Okanagan flows, and where the salmon migrate each
year. Like dozens of other hydroelectric dams along the rivers, it
was built without any thought as to how the fish would get through.

The salmon population,
not surprisingly, dwindled.

In the 1950s, both
Canada and the U.S. began “channelizing” the rivers, making them
easier for humans to navigate, but destroying the sockeye’s natural
habitat in the process. In the entire Columbia Basin, only a small
stretch of river beneath McIntyre Bluff was left untouched.

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Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.